1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to large file transfer from behind a secure firewall, such as for example in a B2B communication or integration environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
In known systems in which B2B communication or integration occurs, each party often couples its B2B systems from behind an enterprise network firewall. The firewall is typically configured to disallow any communication across the firewall, other than specific selected communication protocols. Typically, these specific selected communication protocols include only email and web browsing.
One problem in the known art is that neither email nor web browsing allow for convenient transfer of large amounts of data, such as for example large files. Email communication is typically limited by a pre-selected maximum amount of disk space allotted to cached email, by a pre-selected maximum amount of disk space allotted to received email, and by a pre-selected maximum size of an email message, whichever of these is less, for the entire path the email must travel from source to destination. Moreover, email involves a transfer of a single large file, so that if an email message is not delivered in its entirety, retry does not involve being able to restart the message from some delivery midpoint. Web browsing is limited by using a request/response model of communication, not involving serial delivery of multiple chunks of information. Thus, like email, if a web message (such as for example a POST command) is not delivered in its entirety, retry does not involve being able to restart the message from some delivery midpoint.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide an improved technique for transferring files, such as for example a technique using a web browser connection from behind a secure firewall, in a manner that is reliable, restartable, and secure. In one embodiment, the files might be very large, such as for example in excess of 1 Gigabyte.